Snakepit (31 page)

He had renamed the child, calling her Samsona, claiming paternity on the technicality that Victoria must have carried his sperm in her body for years before it exploded into germination. He had convinced Victoria, who was not in a position to argue to the contrary, that this was a common occurrence among bears, and since bears, lower animals, could do it, what of humans? Whenever he came to visit, she would tell the child, “Come and greet your father, Samsona.” The child would come and sit on the General's lap. He would make an effort to play with it before tiring of the games and sending it off. There was little conversation between the General and Victoria, partly because it had always been that way, partly because there was not much to say. The General usually came to instruct her what to do when the trial began. He had made sure that the State Research Bureau paid her salary on time, and in full, and gave her round-the-clock protection. This last provision did not sit well with the police, but there was little they could do about it; they had their lives and careers to think about.

Before the trial started, the General hired the best lawyers left in the city and ordered the best tailors to design the most flamboyant garments for Victoria. The first time she appeared in court, she was dressed like a Muslim pilgrim from Mecca. She was wrapped in clothes so fine and so white that they looked almost diaphanous. On her head she wore a thin cape which flattered her features well.

Bat and Babit's family were scandalized. Since the first proceedings were highly technical, mere preambles, and since lawyers spoke softly, most people in court paid more attention to Victoria's appearance than to what was going on. Bat had come expecting the General to reveal his tactics, and from then on he knew that provocation was going to be a regular feature of the sessions. There were complaints from Muslims about Victoria's clothing in the only paper in business, but no apology was offered.

The next time round, two weeks later, she came dressed as an Egyptian queen, with flowing garments, a belt, huge gold bangles, rich eyeliner, a bottle of perfume radiating its entire intoxicating content to every corner of the court-house. People got headaches, stomach cramps, and violent attacks of nausea. The judge became sick in his handkerchief and suspended the hearing for the day. It soon occurred to the General and his team to dress Victoria as a southern princess. He immediately fired the previous dressmakers, without paying them a cent, and hired one who designed royal costumes out of barkcloth and cotton. This time three hefty Bureau agents brought Victoria, with eyebrows in the sky like a haughty royal, to court in a resplendent chair. The monarchists seethed with fury and vowed revenge, but since the kingdoms were abolished, they had to take their anger to bed with them.

The trial turned into such a farce that Bat walked out on a number of occasions. He would lie in his bed at night, unable to sleep a wink, and wonder what use the trial was. The search for justice seemed futile. At the height of his despair he would see his brother's irate face asking him why he had turned down his offer to deal with Victoria outside the reaches of justice. “Is this what you wanted?” he would be saying in a hoarse voice. He would get up and walk about in the house to distract himself from such thoughts. He would think about Babit in her glory and in her desecration, and the determination not to give up came back. He no longer had nightmares, just waking dreams, feelings of longing, guilt, emptiness, loss.

On the days she was cross-examined, Victoria would put on her royal robes and arrive in a magnificent chair with long polished handles. Her lawyer made so many objections and wasted so much time that little work was done. Bat would lose patience with his lawyers, but since there were no others eager to take on the case, he could not push them too far. They were receiving death threats against themselves and their families but had refused to quit the case, and he respected them for that.

Many people, including Babit's parents, talked of dropping the case, if only to save Babit's name. They could not bear to hear her called a common prostitute. Bat knew that, these being rural folks, they might forget that history was ephemeral; it erased itself as soon as it wrote itself. Opening the case under another regime would not be possible. The case would simply vanish. Files would get lost or burned. They forgot that the next regime would have bigger problems than the aborted search for justice in Babit's name.

Babit's mother could hardly bear to look at Victoria. The fact that the same woman, a commoner passing herself off as royalty, had killed her first child made her physically sick, and many times she refused to go to court. She would stay home or come with the family and stay somewhere in town and wait for the reports at the end of the day.

GENERAL BAZOOKA SAVOURED the drama. He saw himself as an artist at work and he loved every minute of it. He would sit with his cronies on the veranda of his orgy mansion, drink and laugh and argue about the merits and demerits of certain episodes. He planned twists and turns, and the impunity of it served to take his mind off the pressures of work and the misery of having a wife hovering between life and death, her skin as brittle as a dry leaf. He still visited her, disregarding non-visiting hours if necessary, pushing doctors and nurses around, posting guards in awkward places. His chief advisor had urged him to vary his visiting hours for fear of attack by dissidents dressed as doctors, nurses or cleaners.

There had been plans to fly his wife to Libya, to the same hospital where the former Vice President stayed in his wheelchair, but they were still on hold, for she did not want to leave her children behind. When he proposed sending the children along with her, she said that she would think about it. He remembered the way she struggled with each word, releasing it like a gummy drop of sap seeping from a wounded tree trunk. He could imagine the effort giving him an answer cost her. The doctors said that it was a good sign that she had begun to talk, albeit slowly, but he could not recognize her voice; it sounded like sandpaper on rough wood. Nowadays, whenever he brought up the subject, she would ask him to tell her a story, or to talk about the good old days, or to describe the weather outside the window. He had sensed that she was afraid to leave the country, afraid that she might get neglected, left on her own in a strange land. In his heart of hearts he knew that she wanted to die on the soil she had walked all her life. The idea of her death got to him. It trickled into the things he did. It insinuated itself in the way he behaved in cabinet meetings, the impatience he showed at traffic lights and roundabouts. It drove him into creating more spectacles.

He became obsessed with eternal life and Judgement Day. He noticed the abundance of marabou storks in the city. They seemed to be watching, waiting, stalking. It was as if they were waiting for his wife's carcass, and the flesh on his bones. There were several garbage dumps in the city where they congregated in the hundreds, in all sizes, the biggest large as a goat, the smallest not bigger than a rabbit. They looked like mourners frozen in their grief, or rather like very hungry people caught in the game of waiting for the next morsel. They infuriated him when they hovered above the city, coasting on thermal columns thrusting from the ground, almost without moving their wings at all, as though everything beneath them was theirs, ready for the taking. Every week he directed his chauffeur to take him to a different dump. He would take out his automatic rifle and fire, blowing off bills, ripping gizzards, crowning the garbage heaps with twisted carcasses of bleeding storks. Alerted by the shooting, the military police arrived on several occasions.

“Twisted,” they said, going away. “Doesn't he have better things to do? A ministry to run?”

He would go away thinking that he had done something, but the next time the birds seemed to have multiplied by ten, as though out in numbers to mock their tormentor. He would feel his skin creeping with terror. At such moments he would remember his wife's question: “Are the bombers still busy at work?” Busy at work, as though delivering groceries? The power of that innuendo, that indirect criticism of his and his government's inability to take care of the problem, said without the least malice or animosity, could not be erased with the blood of a million storks, and would depress him.

THE TRIAL TRUNDLED ON to an uncertain end. The nearer the end drew, the more outrageously Victoria was instructed to behave. Nowadays she came to court escorted by ten Bureau agents dressed as court pages and behaving as such. On the penultimate day she came dressed like a Catholic nun, with a big glittering rosary dangling from her neck. A group of staunch Catholics took offence. They were dismissed because court rules were, everybody was allowed to dress any way they wanted, as long as it was not in miniskirts. Victoria's habit had fallen way below the knees and thus within the stipulation of the law. Outside court, one hundred indifferent people who had been collected off the streets, put on a lorry and dumped there, were chanting her innocence. They urged the judge to dismiss the case and stop wasting the taxpayers' money.

ON JUDGEMENT DAY Bat woke up very early. He had slept very badly and the previous night's whisky had left him with a big headache. He took a shower and prepared to pick up the day's gauntlet. He had moved to the city, and now lived in a quiet suburb in another government villa. As he sat on the bed fully dressed, it struck him that he was alone, unfussed over, unwatched, and that it was going to be a terrible day. It felt almost as terrible as the day of the funeral. He could hear his sister moving about in another room. His nephew emerged first, wearing a blue cotton suit with red shoes. His sister followed and, seeing that he was not in the mood to talk, busied herself with other things. He went into the garage and sat in the car waiting for the Kalandas and the Professor. He had the urge to drive away and leave everything behind, and return a day or two later to hear what had transpired. His friends arrived ten long minutes later. They exchanged greetings and in two cars they drove to court. The morning mist did not lift the mood either. Bat kept turning on the wipers, then off, then on, then off again. His sister watched him from the corner of her eye, wordlessly. They found Babit's family already at the court-house.

Victoria came dressed as a princess with ten pages in tow. She looked sombre though and did not leer at those she was meant to torment. The proceedings were long-winded, as though the judge had finally decided to assert his authority. Dressed in his black robes and the ridiculous curly white wig, he looked like a kettle with a white tea-cosy. The evidence, everybody heard, was circumstantial, and thus not enough to convict. Victoria walked free. The killers were slapped on the wrist. Victoria and her team jubilated. The pages lifted her in the air, and she waved her way out of court. Bat wanted to lunge at her, too angry for words, but Kalanda restrained him. Outside, the princess talked to journalists from the government paper.

“Justice has been done. Long live law and order and the spirit of reconciliation it fosters. Long live the government of Marshal Amin,” she said, beaming.

Tearful faces raised curses at her. Angry fists were directed at her. The strange thing about losing, even if it was in such a farcical case as this, was that everyone looked embarrassed, as though it was their fault, as though they had not done enough. They found it hard to look each other in the eye. There were words of consolation, which did little to soothe the burning sense of outrage surging in their breasts. Bat's father-in-law advised him not to take the failure personally, and to avoid being destroyed by the poison of bitterness. They all parted silently, as if to contest the defeat at some later date.

BAT BURIED HIMSELF in work. The loss of the case seemed to mark the end of an episode, and now he wanted to look ahead. He wished to see his brother, and hear his voice, and know how he was surviving, but he kept out of his way. It was a week after the verdict that he sent a one-word message: “Bastards.” It had made him laugh; yes, bastards indeed. By now he knew that his brother would not attempt to kill Victoria. It pleased him that he had obeyed him. Maybe he was not beyond salvation, and there were some lights of reason still burning in his head. He still wanted him to yoke his bombing activities to a political agenda, but he knew that the boy was a guerrilla, who fought his own wars, his own way. Now and then, a car bomb went off somewhere. It amazed him how Tayari had eluded his pursuers. How many cars had he blown up by now? How many army shops? That he knew this person, and had known him all his life, also amazed him.

Bat was aware that Victoria could have betrayed him and his entire family to General Bazooka because of Tayari's activities. She wasn't crazy, after all. If she was, then it was selective madness. Demented love, more like it. Obsession. Destroying lives. He didn't want to see her again. And if it meant not seeing his daughter, so be it.

VICTORIA'S FIFTEEN MINUTES of fame ended as dramatically as they had begun. As soon as the trial ended, General Bazooka asked her to make her own security arrangements. Many Bureau agents were angry with her for misusing and tarnishing the Bureau's name in a bid to clear herself of murder. Others hated her because the General had made them worship her and wear ridiculous costumes, beads and cowrie shells. Those who had carried her in and out of court were furious because they had been made to participate in a farce instead of going out to look for the bombers, who were still putting many of their colleagues in hospital or out of business. What did General Bazooka and his slut think? That they were slaves or shit-eating morons? Others were annoyed by the flagrant nepotism and favouritism practised by the big shots, and the great leeway the generals enjoyed. Southern agents, stool pigeons in offices, hospitals, schools, who had joined out of fear or for personal security, cursed her for spitting on royalty and for stirring local resentment. They dreaded the possible rise of monarchist terrorists who might kill them and their families in the name of the king. They were aware that many monarchists were ready to die and kill for the restoration of the kingdoms. Afraid of what might happen to them after the fall of Amin, some of them thought of capturing Victoria and handing her over to the monarchists as a sacrifice to them.